Art: Hammer Icons

Two of the most startling characters in
the U. S. art world are the Brothers Armand and Victor Hammer, one
with a medical degree, both friends of Soviet Russia. Visiting Moscow
in 1921 to do a few months' medical relief work in the Ural farming
area, Armand Hammer ended up by staying nine years and with Brother
Victor became one of the first foreigners to obtain commercial
concessions in Russia, sold Ford tractors, Moline plows, later bought
Russian beer barrel staves for his U. S. factories. Realizing that the
Soviet bureaucracy was becoming...